October 27, 2006
Linux Awards 2006 WINNERS
Positive Internet were shortlisted by the Linux and Open Source Awards 2006 in the Best Linux/Open Source ISP/Internet Host category, alongside Rackspace and Rochen.
At the presentation ceremony, hosted at London's prestigious Millennium Gloucester Hotel, Positive were announced the winners and collected the award, before an audience of key players from the Open Source world. Once again, it's official; we're good.
This followed up an enjoyable day of manning the Positive Internet stall at the Linuxworld Expo. Once again, the big yellow stall was a main attraction of the show, drawing in crowds with our Positive Poker Tournament (played with special PosiDollars), a prize draw for a 32" Sony HDTV and, of course, our Positive support engineers, who were on hand to answer your open source queries and technical enquiries. Many existing clients came along to meet and greet the team that have provided first class support for their servers.
..and, of course, we had a little help from Gerald.
February 7, 2006
Guardian Unlimited and Positive Internet take Ricky Gervais into the Guinness World Records.
Ricky Gervais and his team were this week awarded the Guinness World Record for the most downloaded podcast, gaining an average of 261,670 downloads per episode of The Ricky Gervais Show. during its first month.
The podcast has been available since December at www.guardian.co.uk who called upon web host specialists The Positive Internet Company to cope with the anticipated very high download levels. Although the podcast was always sure to be hugely popular, actual downloads massively exceeded expectations but still went ahead without any technical hitches.
Far from simply presenting highlights of previously recorded material, the weekly podcast shows were entirely new material consisting of random and highly amusing discussions between Ricky, and his friends Karl Pilkington and Stephen Merchant.
The official certificate was presented to Ricky and the team by Craig Glenday, editor of Guinness World Records at the Guardian Offices on Monday.
Ricky Gervais said, "Steve and Karl wanted to charge for the podcast. Just a pound they said. I said no. We've had nearly 3 million downloads so far. It's difficult doing a show with two people who won.t talk to me now."
The record will be a contester for the 2006 edition of Guinness World Records, out in the autumn. Craig Glenday, editor of Guinness World Records says: "People say that there's nothing new under the sun, that there's nothing left to discover and no records left to be set. But this new podcasting achievement shows that there's always scope for record breaking, and we're pleased to welcome Ricky and his team to the Guinness World Records hall of fame. It's got a certain ring to it: Amundsen, Armstrong, Hillary and Gervais."
left to right: Craig Glenday (GWR), Karl Pilkington, Stephen Merchant, Ricky Gervais, Jake Jellinek (Positive Internet), Nick Mailer (Positive Internet).
December 21, 2005
POSITIVE INTERNET DELIVER MOST POPULAR PODCAST EVER
The Positive Internet Company has successfully delivered a web host platform for one of the most popular Podcasts ever broadcast.
The 12 weekly series of Ricky Gervais Podcasts launched on 5th December through the Guardian Unlimited website and attracted a massive 451,000 downloads in its first two weeks alone. This represents more than seven times the download traffic that was initially anticipated and has knocked Chris Moyles off the top of the iTunes download chart to become the biggest ever download.
Not only does this demonstrate the popularity of Ricky Gervais and the sheer user friendliness of this latest technology innovation, but it also highlights the fundamental importance of having a host platform, such as provided by Positive Internet, that can really cope under pressure.
Jake Jellinek at the Positive Internet commented. "We anticipated 60,000 downloads in the first two weeks and implemented a structure that would easily cope with 200,000 downloads but even this estimation was exceeded by over 100%. Our team carefully monitors all clients hosting and as soon as the popularity of the Gervais Podcast was becoming apparent, we ensured the extra capacity was made available. Our network continued to run and serve all customers as fast as ever."
Jellinek continued. "451,000 downloads may not sound huge when it comes to internet figures, but if you look at the data volume represented in downloads then you are looking at over 6.2 Terabytes or 6.5 million Megabytes. If this volume of data were printed on paper, it would require 372,000 trees, a clear demonstration of the staggering cost efficiencies and speed of delivery offered through Podcasting. However businesses looking to utilise this technology should look at the full technical implications of this technology, ensuring they have the server capacity in place to cope with the potential demands. Either through their own infrastructure or a specialist third party host such as Positive Internet."
Ricky Gervais spokesman Glyn Hughes has been totally blown away by the response. "We've been amazed by how many downloads we've had, it's bigger than anything we'd imagined and even the likes of the BBC haven't managed an equivalent success in just one week. Hats off to everyone at Positive Internet for delivering such as seamless solution. We didn't receive a single complaint about slowness or inability to connect or download files, and popular opinion suggests that the show is fantastic so we anticipate further surges of interest throughout the series."
December 04, 2005
THE POSITIVE INTERNET COMPANY TO HOST RICKY GERVAIS PODCAST
Independent Linux specialists, The Positive Internet Company has been selected to host the new Ricky Gervais Podcasts which will be available for download at the Guardian Unlimited website from December 5th.
The Office star himself and co-writer, Stephen Merchant will host a weekly talk show as a Podcast via the Guardian Unlimited website, described by Gervais as "a radio show where I can say what I want, when I want and that's free for anybody who can be bothered to listen". As with many other Podcasts, this new Gervais project will not simply be the best bits of a radio programme listeners may have missed, but a new broadcast 'straight-to-Podcast', effectively creating a kind of exclusive club.
Anticipating around 30,000 hits each week, the show looks set to be the most popular Podcast to date and The Positive Internet Company was chosen for having one of the most secure and reliable networking structures in place to cope with the content and inevitably high level of visitors. As part of the service, The Positive Internet Company have specified a network to cope with 100,000 visitors per week with 99.9% uptime.
On behalf of Positive Internet, Nick Mailer says, "We're really excited to be chosen to host the Ricky Gervais Podcast programmes and it's a great endorsement of Positive Internet's heavyweight capabilities and high levels of service in the web hosting sector. Podcasting is rapidly becoming hugely popular and there's no doubt that more and more websites will have to revisit their server capabilities to be able to offer this feature in the future. With much larger files and an upsurge of visitor levels created by Podcast services, websites will need to increase their bandwidth which has knock on implications for the speed and reliability of the server, which is where we are confident that The Positive Internet Company provides a really strong proposition in the market".
To download the Ricky Gervais Podcast visit www.guardian.co.uk/rickygervais from Monday 5 Dec. Further details about effective web hosting solutions can be found at www.positive-internet.com.
